Walking by Faith
Tom Shrader continues his series on faith by examining how believers must walk by faith daily, not just exercise saving faith. Using Hebrews 11 and the example of Noah, he teaches that faith is the obedient response to God's promises and commands, emphasizing that God cares about our obedience rather than results. He challenges listeners to understand that faith is not about depth but about the object of faith - God Himself.
“Faith is the obedient response to the promises and commands of God.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Fundamentals of Faith
Recorded: July 19, 2007
Duration: 43 min
Themes: faith, obedience, grace, salvation, trials, trust, discipleship, surrender, struggling with doubt, facing daily challenges, new believer, mature christian, parent teaching faith, mentor, navigating trials, feeling overwhelmed
Scripture: Hebrews 11:1-7, 2 Corinthians 5:7, Genesis 6, Isaiah 55:8-9, Jeremiah 29:13, Proverbs 8:17, Genesis 3, Genesis 1
Theological Themes: sanctification, growing in holiness, justification by faith, daily faith, perseverance of saints, gospel application, biblical obedience, walking by faith
Full Transcript
Well, week two of a special series. This is new stuff for you, me, us. Stuff that we're creating. Let me tell you the genesis of this study about faith.
We spend a great deal of time talking about faith and talking about grace. Those are two words we talk about a lot. We love grace, we love faith. We talk about it oftentimes in the context of saving grace or saving faith. By that we mean, I'm saved by grace. Salvation means delivered from my sin. We talked a lot about it. If you're here today and you're not saved, that's a word you might be unfamiliar with, or you have a preconceived notion of it. We talked a ton about that last week, so next week the tape will be out—make sure you grab that.
What Salvation Really Means
When we're talking about saved, we're talking about man as a sinner, separated from God, and the only thing that can bridge that is God's grace. God extends grace to His people, He changes our hearts, our minds, our attitudes, and He brings us, changes us, from children of wrath to children of God. From sons and daughters of disobedience to children of obedience. And there is the struggle.
Here's what I've discovered. It's not universal in terms of thought, it's not even universal and constant in our lives. But frequently when we talk about grace and faith, we talk about it in the context of that salvation moment, and we fail to understand that we live by grace and we live by faith. So that's what we're talking about in these four weeks.
Living by the Gospel Daily
I have to preach the gospel to myself every day. The gospel is not something that I look around and make disciples with—looking for people who we would say are not Christians and sharing the gospel with them. That's certainly part of it in evangelism, but to myself as a follower of Christ, I need to be reminded of the gospel every day. I need to be reminded of His grace and His mercy and of my sin.
I need to be reminded that although I can sing a song like, "You're all I need"—we sang that last Sunday at church, and every time we sing it, I just smile. Because here are all these hearty voices singing, "You're all I need. You're all I need." And then God comes along and says, "Really? I'm it. I'm all you need. Let's test that." And you go, "All right, here's the deal, God. You're a lot of what I need." I mean, that's how we morph in that conversation.
But this life has with it an endless set of trials and difficulties and challenges. It does not stop. It doesn't go away. It may morph—that's what James says: "Count it all joy when you encounter various trials," literally multi-colored trials, meaning they come in various shapes and sizes, but they're constant in our life.
Faith Sustains Our Relationship with God
In our life, for us to sustain this relationship with God through Christ, we need His grace, and we need faith. Here's our definition of faith, and you have it on your outline—well, you would have if you were here last week, because I said, "Here's last week and bring them next week."
Here's the definition of faith. I love the definition of faith: It's the obedient response to the promises and commands of God. That is a wonderful definition. If you are someone who considers your faith seriously, you need to grab hold of this, and now we just unpack this for four weeks. It's our obedient response to the promises and commands of God.
Peter and Judas: A Study in Faith
If you have Bibles with you, you can open them to Hebrews chapter 11. We said last week we're going to look at three verses, try to continue to expand our discussion on faith, and then illustrate, illustrate, illustrate, primarily out of Hebrews chapter 11, the Hall of Fame of Faith. Then I want to take a couple of in-depth looks at a couple of personalities from the Scripture, and time's going to drive that.
I want to look at Peter. I love Peter, and I think you see faith all over Peter. I don't know if you ever thought about this, but essentially Judas and Peter are guilty, if you will, of the same sin—really betraying Christ. One goes and hangs himself, one becomes a pillar of the church. What's the difference there? It's the obedient response to the promises and commands of God.
The Biblical Definition of Faith
As far as I know, Hebrews chapter 11 verse 1 is the only place we have in Scripture where we have a definition of faith. It's assurance or the certainty of things hoped for. Now let's make sure we understand that. Hoped. We'll use that word frequently this way: "I hope the Diamondbacks make the playoff. I hope the deal closed. I hope we get some rain." So what we're saying is, here's this thing in the future, not really sure, it would sure be to our benefit, I wish, I wish, I wish it would end up this way.
That's not the way this word is used. When the author of Hebrews talks about this assurance of things hoped for, he's talking about the promises of God that are in the future that are as certain as today. Faith makes us certain of the things that are hoped for, assured of the things that are hoped for, conviction of the things not seen.
When We Feel Unforgivable
What would that be? Well, sometimes in my life I sin. You might be here right now. You might be sitting there right now saying, "You know what, I got no business being here. If these people knew who I was, if they knew what I did this week, if they knew not just what I was thinking but actually what I did, if they knew that, I got no place in here." You might be sitting there thinking that right now. I've sinned and I know better and I do that and then—that's probably true, right? That's probably true.
Here's the next part that's not true. But then I'll say something like, "Not even God could really forgive this." Whoa. I've talked to people that are so immersed in their own guilt that they'll say, "I don't think even God can forgive me." Wait a minute. The assurance of things hoped for, the certainty—
If I'm to make a list of realities or convictions I cannot see, one of those things would be this: that I'm forgiven. If I confess my sin, if I'm a follower of Christ, there's no sin that I could commit that He won't forgive me and hasn't forgiven me. Christ died for that sin. It might be a reality like God will never leave me or forsake me, but yet aren't there times when I'm going, "Okay, I got that. Where are You right now? It doesn't feel like You're here."
That's why this is a wonderful truth. What we know from the Scripture, God's promises and commands—what we know trumps what we feel. Our feelings can deceive us. We can look around and we're not really sure and we can't see our way, and faith says, "No, there is a way even if you can't see it because God sees it," because we are responsive, obediently to His faith and to His promises and His commands.
Here's what we talked about last week: Isaiah 55 verses 8 and 9. God says, "My ways aren't your ways, my thoughts aren't your thoughts." God sees the world differently. Our whole quest in life to really understand life is to understand who God is.
The Questions We Ask God
So often when I talk to men and women who aren't Christians, they have a lot of questions—and they have a lot of questions of God. You notice that? A lot of people, a lot of questions of God. "Why would God let this happen? Why would God let this?" I'm talking to somebody the other day and their mother is dying and their mother is 86 years old, and they're asking, "Why would God let this happen?"
Well, here you go. And I don't mean to be crass here, but when you're 86 you die. I mean that's kind of the way the thing goes. And I don't mean to be unfair, but what did you want Him to do? Do you want Him to give you to 88? To 90? At what point is God okay to allow you to die? And we ask those questions all the time.
We ask these questions of God. You don't have to get to the point where we understand the questions that need to be answered are not the questions we ask God, but the questions He has of us. The things God has questions of us, like what do you say about Me?
God's Questions to Us
Go way back, Genesis chapter 3, wonderful question. Here's what God says to Adam: "Where are you, Adam?" Now He's not seeking information—God knows exactly where he is. What's He trying to do there? He's trying to say to Adam, "Hey man, you better figure this out. You were in the garden and everything was going well, now you're hiding and you're naked and you're guilty." First act of abnormal behavior in the human race: Adam's hiding. "How'd you get there, Adam? What happened? How was it you're over here and now you're over here in this bush hiding?" It's a very important question to answer, and the Scriptures fill those questions.
So our whole life is to understand God, begin to seek out who He is, do it through the Scripture—it's the only way I'm going to know—find out who He is, pursue Him, and then live a life (we don't like this) that's godly and holy. Last week we read this from J.I. Packer: "Godliness means responding to God's revelation in trust and obedience." Okay, so here's what it is: God says this, we respond in trust and obedience, faith and worship, prayer and praise, submission and service.
Life—this is such a great simple sentence—life must be seen and lived in light of God's Word, and nothing else is true religion. I need to understand what God thinks and what God says, and that's my pursuit.
Walking by Faith
That's what we talked about last week. I want to expand on that whole idea this week: that I'm saved by grace through faith, but now I walk. That's what Paul tells us—we'll get there in a second. That's what Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5: walk by faith, live by faith, live by the obedient response to the promises and commands of God.
Let's talk about faith itself for just a second. Some maybe myths and just some observations. Here's one of those things we need to really understand: God is concerned about our obedience, not about results. We are a very result-oriented society.
I talked yesterday to a gentleman who's involved in a major corporation—you know the corporation, you even have some of their products with you right now would be my guess. He said, "I can't take it anymore. I'm out of here. I've been working here, I've been in this industry for 25 years, I've been with this company 13 years, and it is too much. It's too intense. There's too much going on. They don't really care. I'm doing this projection for the next 10 years, and the reality is we're sitting in meetings—what are you doing 10 weeks—and all they care about is the bottom line."
Now I understand that, right? The bottom line is important, but we live in a result-oriented society.
Results vs. Obedience
Anytime you watch a game—guys, gals—from Fenway Park, you see a ball go flying out toward the outfield. There's the standings in the American League East right there, and they're loving it right now. The Red Sox, here's everybody else.
I talked to a fellow yesterday that plays on the seniors tour golf. I hadn't seen his name for a while, so my assumption was that he was hurt, so I called him and I said, "How are you doing?" He said, "Oh my gosh, I played last week, did okay, but I'm hurt. I can't—my neck's hurt so I can't do this." And we started talking: driving distance, money, winning. That's the world we live in.
Look how this carries over into your life. So husband and wife come to see me and they say, "We're not getting along. What do we do?" Well, it's difficult to do when they're both in the room, but here's what you're ultimately saying to the guy: "Okay, here's the deal. She may be difficult and awful and you may not have chosen well, but you did, and you said 'for better or worse,' and we're in the worse part. But you are to love her as Christ loves the church in a sacrificial, loving way."
Simultaneously, you're with the wife saying, "Okay, I got it. He's a jerk. Got it. Terrible, awful guy. Problem is, you picked him. You're there. You're in it. Your responsibility is to submit."
Faith Rooted in Practical Obedience
Let me give you an illustration from marriage counseling. When a wife tells me her husband doesn't seem to love her, I tell her to love him. When a husband tells me his wife doesn't seem to love him, I tell him to love her. What I try to tell the gals in that situation is fix dinner and make love—that seems to solve a lot of problems. It's just kind of my answer to all counseling: feed him and love him, and everything's going to go a little better, at least for a period of time. And then I tell the guy to just love her. Those aren't mutually exclusive—it's love.
Here's the question both of them ask immediately: "How long do I have to do that if she doesn't respond? How long do I have to do that if he doesn't respond? A week? A month? A year? How long do I have to do that?" We're seeing all sorts of marriages that are breaking up now after 25 or 30 years. Here's what's happening: the marriage—Susan's going to be with me in two weeks because after we're done here, we're going on vacation, so Susan's going to be here in two weeks. If she was here, we couldn't say this next part because she doesn't like it when we say it. You don't even like this word, but it's such a good word: sucks.
I love that word. I know I'm not supposed to say it, but I love that word. "It sucks. My marriage sucks. This whole thing sucks. How long am I supposed to do this because it sucks? How long am I supposed to do it?"
You're supposed to do it forever. "What if she doesn't respond?" It doesn't matter. You're supposed to have an obedient response to the promises and commands of God whether she responds or not. Now it will be wonderful if she does, and if you're really loving her like Christ loves the church, she'll probably respond. "How long do I submit?" Forever, because it's not about the results.
Obedience Over Results
Our life is not driven by results when it comes to God and our relationship with Him—it's driven by our obedience. God wants me to obey the promises and commands of God. Now you all are really sharp people. I'm to respond obediently to the promises and commands of God. What's essential for that to take place? Really simple now—don't overthink this, don't overcook this: I've got to know them.
I can't respond obediently to the promises and commands of God if I don't know what they are. So I better get my eyes into this Word. Faith is not this blind thing that says I'm intellectually committing suicide. No, I'm taking the reality of what God has made known to me through creation and through His Word, and now I plan my life and death accordingly. I put my faith and trust in Him. I'm saved by grace through faith. If I confess with my mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in my heart that God raised Him from the dead—my mind's engaged, I've got it, my emotions are there—but now my actions line up.
The Object of Faith Matters Most
Give you another observation about faith: it doesn't matter the depth of your faith; it matters the object of your faith. You're in a plane—you're getting on a plane Monday, you're getting on a plane. Anytime you get on a plane, you demonstrate great faith: faith in the pilot, faith in the aircraft, faith in the tower, faith in the other pilots, because you know you can be flying along and BAM, somebody else crashes into you. You have faith all over the joint when you get in an airplane.
Well, there were almost 200 people who got on a plane in Brazil the other day with a ton of faith, and they crashed and they were killed. The problem wasn't their depth of faith—they had enough faith to risk their lives. The problem was the object of their faith: the pilot or the aircraft or the runway, whatever it was. Something engaged in that process did not have the capacity to perform what it took to complete that task.
The problem is not—and the importance here is not depth of faith, but object of faith. You have faith just to drive up here today. Every time you drive through a green light, you're demonstrating great faith that the people at the red light are going to stop. When you go out today and order—let's say it's breakfast time, so let's say you want to just kind of cheat a little, so you go to Sonic and get a double cheeseburger for breakfast, which is really pretty good. Every time you go to Sonic or every time you go to any restaurant, you're putting great faith and trust in them. You're thinking the food's clean, the kitchen's clean. When you sat in that chair, you demonstrated great faith. It doesn't matter the depth of that faith—though we want to see that faith grow deep—it's the object of the faith that's the issue.
The Solid Ground of Faith
John MacArthur writes this: "Faith then provides the firm ground on which we stand waiting for the fulfillment of God's promises. Far from being nebulous and uncertain, faith is the most solid possible conviction. Faith is the present essence of a future reality. Faith is the certainty of things that we hope for."
Again MacArthur continues: "Faith is not a wistful longing for something that may come to pass in an uncertain tomorrow. True faith is an absolute certainty, often of things that the world considers unreal or impossible." That's faith.
Billy Graham's Example of Faith
About a month ago, when Billy Graham was at the Billy Graham Library and they were there to bury Ruth Graham, Billy Graham made this comment: "I believe the Lord has brought us to this point, and I'm looking forward to the day when we'll have the next service here." Well, there are no services scheduled at the Billy Graham Library except Billy Graham's burial. Now how can you say that?
I'm watching Billy Graham classics the other night. It's funny—I watch a lot of classics now. I think I'm getting old because I watch golf channel classics, ESPN classics. I'm watching Billy Graham classics, and here's Billy Graham, and he's just so fiery, and then you see him kind of mellow a little.
bit maybe even I would argue maybe lose target just a bit, and then you see him now and you see that fire. I mean here's this driving force for a half a century, and you see him now with a walker and very feeble and very difficult for him to talk.
You know what he wants to do? He wants to die. Why? Because he is convinced—this is all speculation—but he's convinced that he's fulfilled the responsibility that God has given him and all he wants to do is to go home to a place he's never been to be with His God. That's what he wants. Well he's deluded himself. He is certain of a reality he has not yet seen. That's faith.
It's an obedient response to the promises and commands of God. It allows us to prepare for life and to prepare for death and it sets us immediately at odds with the rest of the world.
Faith Helps Us Understand Creation
Look at Hebrews chapter 11 verse 3. It's a wonderful simple little verse. "By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the Word of God so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible." What's he saying? Well 2,000 years ago apparently they were trying to figure out where'd all this stuff come from and they haven't solved it yet have they? We'll get that all the time. That's a constant question. Where did all this come from? How did we get here? All of those questions.
Here you go. We hate this but I personally love it. Genesis 1: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." That's how you got here man. God created the heaven and the earth. How do you know that? By faith. You see that? By faith we understand. We get it. It makes sense.
We can't see the act of creation. We see the result of it. We can't possibly scientifically prove it because to scientifically prove it you have to recreate the event which is impossible for us to do. So when somebody says you have to have scientific evidence well you can't win that argument because you can't go and recreate this. You can't take it to a lab and figure it out. All you can do is say look at all this stuff.
The first evangelist to the earth was what? The earth. The earth screams of its creation and what the author of Hebrews says is we understand by faith something as complex as this universe how it happened: that God prepared it by His word. Look at the second part of that: "so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible." What we see all around us was not made or assembled.
God Creates Rather Than Assembles
Remember we talked about that last week. God did not assemble the universe He created it. Big difference. Some of you in here in the construction industry or developers or builders and you do extraordinary things through physics and geometry and engineering you create these wonderful buildings and these wonderful projects or you make these amazing things. I'm now recording on this iPod that's an amazing thing to me. But do you get that all they did was assemble? None of these were created. God created.
How do you know that? Well by faith. See He said He did and so my obedient response to the promises and commands of God is that He said He created it so I believe that He did.
Faith Is Essential to Please God
Now for our practical day-to-day living verse 6 is essential. "Without faith it's impossible to please Him. For he who comes to God must believe that He is." So religion doesn't please Him. They would be concerned in that day and age about nationality or heritage so I'm a Jew that's got to be pleasing God. He goes no no no no. So we might say this way I'm a Catholic, I'm a Methodist, I'm a Presbyterian. I'm this, I'm that, my heritage, my father. I come from a generation five generations of preachers.
Irrelevant doesn't matter that's good that's good for you it probably means that you had a little advantage growing up and that you probably heard the Word of God at a very young age and that gave you a certain but that doesn't please God that your dad was a great guy. Doesn't please God that you had this wonderful mom. It's not good works.
The Common Misconception About Being Good Enough
We'll get that all the time. Majority of people in this country. If I go over to Fashion Square today and I hang out let's pick out a place to hang out over there. Kind of down by Addy's down there by the little area where Nordstrom has a little coffee shop. Let's say I'm hanging out down there and I'm just stopping people say do you mind if I can I ask you a couple questions? Yeah. Do you think that when you die there's a heaven? Well most people say yes I can't remember the number like 84% or something. Do you think you're going there? Yeah. Why? Dominant answer: I'm a good person.
Well rather than argue that because I have friends at that well the scripture says no one's good. How did you figure out that you had to be good to go to heaven? That's a wonderful question and we sometimes gloss over that. Well and here's what the answer is: If I was God that's how I do it. If I was God that's how I would do it. If I was God I would say well there's a lot of jerks in the world and there's a lot of good people and and what does it mean then you got to ask the question what does it mean to be good and I'm always going to define it so I'm on this side of whatever that is.
Without faith it's impossible to please God. Here's what God says to us in His word: "You will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart" (Jeremiah 29:13). "I love those who love me and those who diligently seek me will find me." God speaks to us from His word in Proverbs 8:17. So there's faith.
Walking by Faith, Not by Sight
Look at 2nd Corinthians chapter 5 with me for a second would you please we got about 15 minutes here. 2nd Corinthians chapter 5 let me give you the verse and then do what we need to do always right what is that put it in context and then let's see how it applies to what we're talking about. 2nd Corinthians chapter 5 verse 7 circle it underline it mark it up do something because you're going to want to come back to this now as it's kind of the center of this series really for we walk by faith not by sight.
Now in the context around that verse 6, he says therefore being always of good courage and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord. Well the challenge for us as we begin to tackle that verse is the first word "therefore." Because the minute I read the word "therefore" I'm going, "Okay, I don't have enough information yet. I got to go back because he's trying to connect this thought with something that preceded that." See what I'm saying? Bible study thing is not that tough, is it? It's a lot of little common sense.
So I read "therefore" and I'm going, "Okay, I gotta go back further. What's he trying to get at?" Well if we go back to verse 1 of chapter 5, he said we know that if the earthly tent, which is our house, is torn down—so again what's he talking about now? Imagery. This body. If this body is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in heaven. We're going to get a resurrected body. This body's torn down, going to get a new one. For indeed in this house, this body, we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven.
And he just goes on to make this point. We groan in this body. We yearn in this body for something different. Those of us who were Christians, there's a sense in which we can't wait to get out of this body.
A Vacation and the Groaning for Something More
Susan and I are getting ready to go on vacation. We are going to be spending approximately 24 hours a day together, seven days a week. That's a lot. It's a lot for me. That's a ton for her. I will do to the best of my ability try to schedule just the right amount of golf to give her relief from me, and I will encourage her to take the car and go to the mall for a while. I don't know what you do there, just do it.
Susan and I have nothing in common. We don't have any hobbies that we like to do together. We have nothing in common. Aren't we a pair? We like each other, which is helpful in the 29 years we've been together. And one of the things we stumbled into, I think it was last year on vacation, she was reading the book *The Mayflower*, some of you read it, and every night at dinner she would give me a book report. It turned out to be a really interesting thing. So every night she would bring a book and she would say, "This is what I read this week or today. I read this. Didn't you know this?" And I'll always go, "Yeah." But she'll say, "Did you know this?" And I'll say, "No, I didn't know that." So I got a lot out of that.
Heaven and Heavenly-Mindedness
So here's what we're going to do. I've decided that we're going to take our time away, the first part of it, and talk about heaven. And I've been looking at the Randy Alcorn book—there's two of them. One's called *Heaven*, one's called *In Light of Eternity*. They're terrific books. They're wonderful books. But I came across a book by Mark Buchanan called *Things Unseen*. And I decided that this is the book we're going to use.
So here you go. Let me read you from the introduction: "I'm dying. Sometimes I forget that. Don't misunderstand. I'm not at present suffering from a terminal illness or mortal wound. I have no virus breeding in my bloodstream, no genetic disease swarming and swiftly, capriciously consuming my flesh. I am not, to my knowledge, dying soon." What's he saying? We're all dying. We're all fatal.
He said, "This book is about heaven and yet not. It's about our longing for heaven, our instinct for it. It's about eternity in our hearts. It's about the groaning inside of us." That's what Paul's writing about in 2 Corinthians 5. "It's about the groaning inside of us that is both an acknowledgment of and a protest against death, and at the same time, a cry for something else. For that which is beyond the grave, stronger, larger than it, more enduring. It's about our yearning for things unseen. It's about wanting heaven. We groan waiting for it. Words can't express these groans. That's why they're groans. Groaning is creation's song, the blues of the cosmos. And we're to hum its melody and take up its chorus."
So this book is not about heaven. This is the key. It's about heavenly-mindedness.
Living by Faith in Light of Eternity
So here's what Paul says. You are to live, walk, conduct your life by faith—the obedient response to the promises and commands of God. And nothing's more basic to that than this idea of, am I going to die? Yes. What happens when I die? And Paul goes on in the midst of all of this to say, to be absent from the body is present with the Lord. Therefore, also, we have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him.
Paul says, "I'm trying to figure out all of life, and in all of life, here's what I need to do. I need to walk by faith, live by faith. And when I live by faith, I understand that I have this body. I'm unhappy with this body. I'm chronically, some of us more than others, I'm chronically dissatisfied and unhappy with the world. And I'm part of the world, so I'm chronically dissatisfied with myself. I chronically disappoint myself. I sin. I do things I wish I wouldn't do. I say things—I was in just a casual conversation yesterday morning, and I said something to someone, and I walked away, and I said, 'That is so—why would you say that? Why is that so stupid? What are you thinking?'"
It feels like the world's getting worse and worse and worse, doesn't it? And I want out of here. But Paul says, "No, no, no, no, no. What you want is what God wants for you. So you may groan for heaven."
The Honest Reality of Our Groaning
Even then, by the way, let me add parenthetically, even then, I'm not groaning for heaven because I want to be with Jesus. I just want to get out of this crap. I wish, I wish I was so spiritual that I couldn't wait to be with Jesus. But I got to admit, every once in a while, I kind of paste that on at the end. "Oh, I want to be with You." But all of it's really about, I just want to get out of this. I'm even disappointed with that. I can't even want to die for the right reason. I mean, this is a very pathetic thing when you begin to unpack it.
So here's my life. My life is this groan. I live by faith. And the most basic thing is now how I'm going to die.
I want you to look in Genesis chapter six, because here's what we're going to do for the balance of this time. Hebrews 11 defines faith. And then he says, here are all these men and women who model for us faith. In Hebrews chapter 11, verse seven, the author writes this: "By faith, Noah, being warned by God about things not yet seen, in reverence prepared the ark for salvation for his household."
Noah's Impossible Assignment
It's recorded there in Genesis chapter six. We're not going to go through the whole thing, but in verse five, God sees the wickedness of man. God decides that He's going to destroy the earth. God sees Noah and He's going to extend grace to Noah.
Verse 14, and here's God's instruction to Noah: "Make for yourself an ark of gopher wood." Likely cypress or cedar, something like that. "And make the ark with rooms, and it shall cover it inside and outside with pitch. And this is how you'll make it. Its length of the ark will be 300 cubits. Breadth of it is 50 cubits, and the height of it is 30 cubits. And you shall make a window." And then the balance of this is He's just giving you the instruction.
Now, let me tell you just a little bit about the ark. A cubit, plus or minus, it's not a specific size. It's generally the distance from the elbow to the tip of the fingers, but that's going to obviously vary by person, but about 18 inches, plus or minus. So the ark was to be 438 feet long and 73 feet wide and 40 feet high.
One of the scholars writes this: "In other words, it was nearly 1½ times the length of a football field and more than four stories high. Since it has three decks, the total deck area was about 96,000 square feet. Its total volume within the decks was about 1.3 million cubic feet. Naval engineers have discovered that the dimensions and the shape of the ark form the most stable ship design known." The ark was not designed for maneuverability, not trying to navigate it through there, but for stability in order to protect those within it.
Faith in the Desert
I want to make sure you get this setting. Noah is somewhere in the desert, kind of between the Tigris and the Euphrates. There is no water around that would require a boat. So let's put it in our context. Noah's in Casa Grande.
Now, let's add to this that most scholars believe at this point in time, Noah and the earth have never seen rain. Noah is in the desert and God says to Him, "Build this big old ark." And what does He do?
Look at verse 22. You want to take a verse and apply it to your life. Genesis 6:22. After all this is said, got all the instruction, it says, "Thus Noah did, according to all that God had commanded him, so he did it."
In other words, God gives this command to Noah that frankly makes absolutely no sense. If Noah would have got his accountability group together and said, you know what? God's told me to build this ark. They would have said, "Hey, Noah, there's no way. Why would you build an ark? There's no water. You don't need an ark. This is stupid. You're wasting money, time, resources."
The Long Obedience
Noah builds the ark. Noah builds the ark over a period of time with his boys and their wives. And it takes Noah about 120 years to build this ark.
Now, just think with me for a second. I'm out of the scripture now. But I think I know human nature well enough to know that here's Noah building this ark and pretty quickly word spreads that Noah's out in the desert and Noah's building an ark. And people are beginning to gather and say, you know, we don't have cable TV. We don't have the internet. We need some amusement. Why don't you pack a lunch and we'll go watch Noah build a boat in the desert where there's no water for 120 years.
And my assumption is that as he's building, these people are saying, Noah, what are you doing? And along the way, Noah is saying, hey, listen, God's going to destroy the earth. But if you come in the ark, you can be saved for 120 years.
And at the end of 120 years, the only people that get on that ark are the same people that he starts with. So if you were to grade Noah as an evangelist, you would give him an A. Because his responsibility is not to convert anyone, it's simply to proclaim the truth.
Results vs. Obedience
See how you are? You wanted to give him a zero because you're results oriented. But it's not about results. It's about obedience. They're gonna say, he's a zero, he's a failure. No, no, no, no, no. His job is to proclaim the truth. He did all that God commanded him.
Here's what we're doing in this series. We are driving home the fact that faith is an obedient response to the promises and commands of God. God told Noah, build the ark, and Noah built the ark. That's faith. What does God want from you? He wants your obedient response to the promises and commands that He gives you.
Well, I love this. Here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna look at Abraham, we're gonna look at Moses. If we get time, we'll look at Peter and Paul. And then there's a whole other group in Hebrews 11 that are really an interesting group that live by faith. Really an interesting group. They're unnamed, but if we get time on the second, we'll talk about them.
Faith Demands Adversity
But in this story, do you see two things? Do you see a picture of Noah's persistence? Faith is persistent. By the way, faith demands adversity. You don't know if you have faith until you have adversity. You don't know if it's real.
So, here you go, through the Spirit: Love, joy, peace, patience. You don't know if you have patience until you're in trying circumstances. And what I've discovered in my life is that I tend to do bigger in big traumatic challenges than the little ones.
I'm behind a guy the other day, and here's our mission. Order a sandwich, get the sandwich, and get out. And this moron
I wanted to say to him, "Can I see your driver's license? Because you've got to be from Tucson. There's no way that you're a Phoenician." And then I started laughing, saying, "Okay, you're the pro from Dover that wants to teach about faith and patience, and you can't handle a guy ordering a sandwich. You may not be the giant of the faith you think you are."
The Test of Real Faith
Now, you don't know. You don't know if you submit to your husband until he screws up. You don't know if you'll love your wife until she's unlovable. You don't know that. You don't know if you have faith in God until He takes the deal away.
Obviously, it's easy when the deal closes. You go, "Ah, trust God, look what He did, He blessed me." But no, now He takes it away. Now what? Now things don't go well.
God's Economy
They're always going well in God's economy. Everything that comes in my life is caused by or allowed by God. And He's not concerned about you trying to figure all that out, but you obediently responding based on His promises and His command.
Pick up right there next week.
Father, help us see this truth. We in no way minimize the fact that life is tough, difficult, has challenges. God, we don't ask You to take those away. We ask You to climb in here with us in the midst of all of that. Let us be the men and women You called us to be. We pray that to You in Jesus' name, Amen.
Have a great week. We'll see you next week.